Spiteful Healer

As the match ended, Aegis’ vision blurred into a bright light, then dimmed to the darkened atmosphere of the waiting room as he and his party reappeared inside of it.

“We’re back here?” Darkshot asked curiously.

“There’s a five-minute break between matches during the semi-finals,” Rakkan explained.

“Great job!” Serenity cheered at them.

Kenji was holding back laughter.“That was… definitive.”

“How’d you know the spell reflect would work?” Pyri eyed Aegis curiously.

Aegis shrugged.

Darkshot raised his eyebrows at him. “You mean, that coulda not worked?”

“Yep. 50-50,” Aegis replied nonchalantly, which got a giggle out of Lina and a sigh of disbelief out of Darkshot.

“So what's the plan now? No way he tries to use that spell on us again, right?” Rakkan asked. “Right,” Aegis motioned the group in closer. “We’re going to do something crazy. It’s going to be something no one has ever seen us do before. Are you guys ready?” Aegis looked at them all with a serious expression.

“Shouldn’t you mute the stream first?” Darkshot implored him.

“No, even if they see it coming, they won’t be able to handle it.”

“It’s that crazy, huh?” Pyri looked at him with intrigue.

“Borderline insane. Okay. Listen,” Aegis paused for dramatic effect, then took a deep breath. “We are going to execute… our ultimate… unbeatable… first time ever before seen on livestream… standard formation.”

After an awkward pause, he got a sharp stare from Darkshot. “What?”

“What do you mean?” Rakkan looked confused.

“You know, our standard attack formation. The one we kept practicing before the tournament.” Aegis replied.

“How is that a secret weapon?” Rakkan replied.

“It might as well be, seeing as how we’ve gotten to the Semifinals without having a chance to use it once,” Aegis replied.

“He’s got a point.” Pyri nodded as she put her fingers on her chin and pondered it for a moment. “We didn’t need to use it in prelims because our opponents were all weird, save for the last one, which pissed me off.”

“Yeah… then we got Mikael to give us a pass in the first round,” Darkshot added.

“Skar did that weird effigy shield, so we had to play around him,” Lina continued.

“Right. But now that Synopse knows his big attack won’t work, he’ll likely limit how he uses the staff, so...” Aegis waved his hands outwards to his party.

Rakkan nodded. “Standard formation. Got it.” For more chapters visıt noⅴelfire.net

“Is that going to be enough to beat Synopse?” Darkshot asked.

“I mean. Probably. I’ve studied their playstyle so I’ll make call-outs anytime they give us an opening, and we’ll adjust based on that.” Aegis replied. “And remember, no one has actually seen what our standard formation looks like.”

“That’s true. You guys don’t have a typical party composition. I’m actually pretty excited to see how you guys fight with your group of classes,” Kenji added from the side of the waiting room.

Aegis motioned to him with a proud smile. “See?”

“Let’s do it!” Lina cheered with excitement.

A few minutes more of discussion later, and Aegis and his companions were marching back out into the arena. The crowd had a mix of chants, half the audience was cheering ‘SYN-OPS!, SYN-OPSE!’ and the other half cheering ‘AE-GIS! AE-GIS!

Both the VGN casters and Hae-won were shouting praise for their favored team. However, they politely stopped talking over one another and even responded to each other's comments respectfully, despite their explicit biases.

Aegis’ party had their eyes locked on Synopse, and vice versa, but it wasn’t until both teams had arrived right up against the transparent blue wall that anyone spoke.

Aegis grinned mischievously. “How’d you like that?”

To his surprise, though, Synopse responded with laughter. “That really caught us off guard. Taught me a lesson in humility, that’s for sure. Won’t be trying that again anytime soon,” Synopse continued. “He’s scary, you know,” he said to Pyri. “It’s like a mix of Makaroth’s methodical planning and your raw skill. Quite dangerous.”

“Eh,” Pyri shrugged and smiled back at him. “He’s just a cute lil baby to me,” She added by playfully ruffling Aegis’ hair, which knocked him out of his devilish grin to look at his mom with a side-eye.

“Don’t think it’ll be so easy the second time around,” Synopse said, taking a fighting stance.

“I hope not, otherwise this’d be a really boring Semifinal,” Aegis replied.

“Damn, you’re pretty good at this trash talk stuff. Not too mean, but mean enough.” Darkshot whispered to Aegis as he positioned beside him and readied his bow.

“Can you guys stop patronizing me?” Aegis sighed at Darkshot, causing all but Rakkan to laugh.

Match begins in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Match Start.

The blue wall came down, and Aegis’ party charged forward towards Synopse. Synopse waved his staff in the air and quickly cast an astral spell that completed before Aegis’ group could get halfway across the arena. At the same time, Synopse’s party took a defensive formation in front of him.

“Sea of Stars!” Synopse called out as the spell finished. As before, the arena around them faded away, turning into a void with distant stars visible in all directions—seemingly teleporting the match into space.

“Illumination.” Ujak cast a blindingly bright white light that surrounded his party. Lina began shadow-stepping away from Aegis and the others to get closer to Synopse and attempted to throw a smoke bomb into Ujak's light, but the light immediately dispelled the smoke.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Hard to move in space,” Rakkan sighed. He lost all momentum and was floating alongside the others.

“No problem,” Aegis nodded back. “Rakkan, move in close. Once he’s in melee range, you join the fray, Lina. Pyri, defend me. Darkshot, cause chaos and wait for an opening to ranger mark. Don’t worry about your own health, the three of you - I’ll keep you alive and safe,” Aegis instructed them. Following this, he began projecting his shield at Rakkan’s feet.

Rakkan launched himself off the projections to get forward momentum through the space, while the Synopse group held their formations and got their weapons ready.

“They’re not being impeded by the Sea of Stars much,” Gunther commented.

“That’s fine. Stay in the light and use long-range attacks on them. Focus damage on the ones that enter our light. We’ll collapse the moment we see an opening on any of them,” Synopse replied calmly.

From these words, all eyes fell on Rakkan as they watched him launch himself repeatedly closer to their group. Once close enough, Huck wound up a spear and chucked it like a missile at Rakkan, but Aegis reacted quickly and blocked the strike.

“Bless. Aura of Healing. Aura of Beauty.” Aegis called out as the groups engaged, erupting in several light auras that encapsulated the arena.

“Aura of Beauty,” Ujak responded in kind for his party. “Blessing of Vulcan,” He cast, causing a blazing red flame to erupt from every single one of his companions' weapons, including all of Gunther’s battlemaster weapons.

Rakkan created his armed echoes and threw them into the dome of light, enlarging their weapons in turn to sow disarray in Synopse’s party's formation, which began to struggle against the movement through space.

Aegis’ group, on the other hand, had no difficulty moving around thanks to Aegis’ constant shield projections that always exactly where Rakkan needed them to either dodge or reposition. In addition, Lina began throwing daggers of shadow into the light and using grappling shots with the throws to pull herself into the light itself, and slashing out at them at random.

Darkshot fired multishots into the dome and kept redirecting the arrows to come from random directions.

Princessly and Ujak used their shields and healing abilities to protect the group, absorbing most of the damage. At the same time, Synopse released several glowing yellow stars from his staff and shot them around like Pyri’s cinderbolts, dealing damage to Aegis’ companions.

Gunther engaged his weapons with Rakkan’s echoes, and Pyri motioned her cinderbolts forward to intercept Synopse’s stars, redirecting and blocking them.

As instructed, Darkshot wasn’t aiming for any member of Synopse’s group in particular - his arrows were flying willynilly and hitting random targets, dealing minor damage to them that was easily being healed up by Ujak.

The chaos brought about by the random attacks from Rakkan, Lina, Darkshot, and even Pyri as she split her bolts up to burn everyone looked so insignificant compared to Ujak’s healing capabilities. As Synopse engaged with them, he felt himself confused by what Aegis was trying to achieve with this attack formation.

Further, he saw that his party was landing some severe attacks on Aegis’ party members, and they continued as if nothing was happening.

It went on like this for a solid, chaotic 2 minutes.

Hae-won’s mouth was running a mile a minute to try and keep up with all of the attacks going out from both sides, allowing the audience to keep up with the battle taking place in space.

Finally, though, Aegis spoke. "This formation, and that staff. It was all suggested and given to you by VGN, right?” Aegis asked. Synopse took a moment to look at Aegis in the eyes, but didn’t reply as he was focused on controlling his stars. “My mom said she used to play with you, and that you were really good at games. So, that's the only explanation I can think of for why you’re using such a bad strategy,” Aegis added with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

“We’re going to run you out of mana first. You’re taking a lot more damage than we are. This formation is defensively superior to whatever it is you guys are trying to pull,” Ujak retorted with a confident smile, still healing up the damage his party was dealing. Synopse wasn’t so foolish as to ignore Aegis’ taunt, though, and he started to analyze the movements of his opponents carefully.

It only took him a second to realize what was happening. The biggest attacks going out by Synopse’s party were connecting indeed, but not with Aegis’ party members. Aegis was cleverly using shield projections to absorb the biggest attacks to himself.

“Shit, we need to-” Synopse tried, but it was too late.

“Vinerope shot!” Darkshot cast as he had an arrow pierce into Princessly’s shield. It grew out to a dozen vines and entangled all of Synopse’s party members.

“Dispell,” Synopse began casting.

“Rune: Guardian,” Rakkan launched one of his echoes into Synopse and interrupted the spell cast. Aegis had already cast his Avatar of Eirene spell and was propelling himself forward with his wings. Rakkan maneuvered his echoes to block the strikes of Synopse’s group that were attempting to cut the vines of Darkshot’s attack, as were Pyri’s cinderbolts redirecting the weapons of Gunther.

In a short few seconds, Aegis arrived at the center of Synopse’s bound party.

“Virabhadra,” Aegis cast calmly, erupting in a bright dome of light that captured all five members of Synopse’s team. In the moment it hit them, Synopse saw as Rakkan got rid of his echoes so that none of the damage from the spell was split into them, and Lina had already backed off out of the light.

The resulting damage dealt, split among all five of Synopse’s party, was exactly enough damage to kill all five of them in a single blow.

Combatant Synopse has been defeated.

Combatant Huck has been defeated.

Combatant Princessly has been defeated.

Combatant Ujak has been defeated.

Combatant Gunther has been defeated.

Aegis’ team has won the round. 2-0

A few moments later, all members of both teams were teleported back into their waiting areas.

The VGN growled in frustration. “I don’t get it. Why is this so one-sided? Synopse’s staff is an artifact, and their party is all high-level, well-equipped, very skilled players. They were dominant in all of their matches leading up to this point, whilst Aegis’ group just barely made it through the last round.”

“It’s simple, really,” Hae-won said as all eyes fell on her. “If you want to beat Aegis, don’t ever, under any circumstances, give him a chance to study you first.”

Makaroth stomped into the waiting room of Synopse as his party while his livestream was on a commercial break. Synopse’s group looked exhausted, huddled together, discussing how to move forward.

“What the hell are you doing out there? He’s making a fool out of you guys.” Makaroth shouted angrily, causing Synopse’s group to break out of their discussion to look at him. To his surprise, they didn’t seem angry or sad, but rather excited. “Why’re you all smiling like that? You’re getting crushed into the ground! It’s embarrassing!” Makaroth added after seeing their faces.

“Because the match is challenging,” Gunther replied.

“Yeah, the tournament has been pretty one-sided for us up until this point, thanks to that artifact staff,” Huck said.

“So? This match should be one-sided, too.” Makaroth replied.

“Nah. Kid’s got the staff figured out, it’s useless. So is the formation the VGN analysts told us was unbeatable,” Princessly answered him.

“So you can’t win?” Makaroth asked.

“Not with this thing, no,” Synopse motioned to the staff with a hint of disgust.

“Alright…” Makaroth paced around the room as he pondered for a moment. “Then forfeit. Give up the last match. Say you’ll entrust the defeat of Seraxus to Aegis. It’s the only way to save face.”

“What?” Ujak asked.

“You gotta be kidding, right?” Gunther added.

“We’re not forfeiting the match. We’re going to go out there and try our best,” Synopse replied.

“Your best isn’t good enough. We already saw that,” Makaroth responded.

“No, VGN’s best isn’t good enough. We haven’t tried fighting our way yet,” Synopse said.

“How is your way going to be any better?” Makaroth snapped at him, to which Synopse let out an elongated sigh. “Just forfeit and leave it to Seraxus to take him out.”

“Heh?” Synopse suddenly changed his tone to an angry one, surprising everyone present. “Leave it to Seraxus?” He paused to glare at Makaroth. “Just what exactly is more important to you here? Beating your son to prove a point, or stopping an evil player from destroying this island?” He shouted in a commanding tone that left Makaroth looking at him with wide eyes of shock. “Forget this staff. And forget VGN. I’m not partaking in this anymore. You’re too far gone,” Synopse threw the Astral staff at Makaroth, which he caught. “I don’t know if it’s the network or the fame, but you aren’t the same guy I agreed to play this game with 8 months ago. Your ego has turned you into a monster.”

“He has to lose. I have to prove that I was right, I have to-”

“But you weren’t right,” Synopse replied coldly. “You never were. It was a mistake to sign that contract, and you know it. All of this,” Synopse motioned to the stadium in general, rather than just the waiting room they were standing in. “It was all a mistake, and you know it.” He poked his index finger into Makaroth’s chest with force. “The sooner you can admit that, the sooner you can stop making fools of all of us and forcing VGN to cover it up. Escorting the psycho to burn Rene? Hiring pirates? Booking out the qualifying matches? Come on. Seriously? That’s your son and ex-wife. What the FUCK is wrong with you?” He let out another loud shout of anger.